Ask Paul: December 3 (Premium)

Given the news this past week, I’m not surprised to see where your heads are at. So here are some great questions to kick off the weekend.
Wirecutter alternatives
zahrobsky asks:

You have recommended wirecutter.com previously. Now that it has gone behind a paywall, do you have any other recommendations for unbiased product reviews that are free?

No, I’m not aware of any publications that are as authoritative or trustworthy as The Wirecutter. The exception being Consumer Reports, which is of course also a paid publication. I do pay for The Wirecutter now, but I’m not happy about that for a different reason than you: I already subscribe to The New York Times, at great cost, and since they own The Wirecutter now, I’m confused why that isn’t just part of my subscription. But whatever. It’s worth paying for.
Pixel 5a vs. Pixel 6
ggolcher asks:

My wife and I have had Pixel 3 phones and it's time to change them. Having reviewed the Pixel 6 Pro, and with your experience with Pixels in general, which one would you recommend between Pixel 5a and regular Pixel 6?

This is a tough choice. The Pixel 5a has a better overall camera system than the Pixel 3, mostly because of the addition of a second (ultra-wide) lens (the main lens is the same). On the other hand, the Pixel 3XL (not sure if you have one of those) has a better front-facing camera because it has two lenses, one wide, whereas the Pixel 5a has just the one. From a processing perspective, I suspect it would be a close match: the Pixel 3/3XL has a Snapdragon 845 processor, which was decent a few years ago, while the Pixel 5a has a Snapdragon 765G, which is middle of the road today. I’m not a benchmark fan, of course, but looking at Geekbench scores might be instructive: The Pixel 3 scores 495/1685 (single/multicore), whereas the Pixel 5a scores 556/1487. So that sort of bears out my anecdotal guess about the relative performance: the 5a isn’t much of an upgrade from a performance perspective (and it may be worse; I think the Pixel 3 had that Pixel Visual Core chipset that aided photography tasks). The Pixel 5a supports 5G, if that matters to you.

The Pixel 6, meanwhile, is a thoroughly modern device with a great processor (944/2739 on Geekbench since we’re dabbling in that now), an improved rear camera with two lenses, one of which, the main lens, is a significant upgrade, a more modern design, a bigger, high-resolution display, and so on. There are questions, of course, around reliability. (And I’m not sure if this colors your choice at all, but literally just today my Pixel 6 Pro froze and would not display a thing. I had to frig with it for 30 minutes before I got it to reboot and work.)

Pricing is interesting and should help decide this. The Pixel 5a is $449---it was $399 during the Black Friday sale, ah well---while the Pixel 6 starts at $599. So a $150 difference. And I think that kind of seals it, given that you’re both still using a Pixel 3. Yo...

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